PASADENA – The Ambassador West project, one of the largest and most prestigious in the city’s history, has been foreclosed on and the property is back on the market for the fourth time in a decade.

“We no longer own any of the property,” Howard Weinberg, a part-owner of Ambassador West, said Monday. “A foreclosure sale has occurred.”

In a double blow to a 10-year effort to develop the former Ambassador College campus, plans for the Sterling of Pasadena luxury senior-living complex on an adjoining site have been scrapped.

“Sunrise Senior Living has made the decision to discontinue development of The Sterling condominium community in Pasadena,” officials from the Virginia-based company confirmed in a statement Monday, and is “currently evaluating alternative options for this development.”

Sunrise Senior Living bought the parcel fronting Green Street and St. John Avenue, and adjacent to the Ambassador Auditorium, from the owners earlier this year. It’s no longer part of the Ambassador West site and is unaffected by the foreclosure.

Drawbridge Special Opportunities Fund Ltd. decided to foreclose on Ambassador West’s prime 19.72-acre site about three months after appointing a receiver when AACP Properties and Ambassador Acquisition Coalition Partners II defaulted on a $4 million loan.

Weinberg said he had “no idea” how the cancellation of the senior living project – two six-story buildings linked by a bridge – would affect the Ambassador West property sale. “But at 440,000 square feet it was a substantial part of the total 640,000 square feet of new development,” Weinberg said.

Both major projects may be in limbo for now, said Richard Bruckner, Pasadena’s director of planning and development. But he’s confident the site will be developed despite the economic “dark clouds” and profound change in the marketplace.

He said he’s been told the property owners are “in serious discussions” with a potential buyer.

“It’s still the premier site in Pasadena,” Bruckner said. “It’s also a complex site and we as a city have worked to ensure we get quality development. The right developer will come along, at the right price, and build there, I truly believe.”

All the site entitlements hashed out over the past decade – including density and preservation of the elaborate landscaping – go with the property and will apply to any future buyer or developer, Bruckner said.

The Ambassador West project had called for 70 condos and 46 apartments while preserving 12 acres – or 72 percent of the site – as open space. Several historic mansions on the site are now privately owned.

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